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How Timothy Dexter Turned Ridiculous Ventures Into Riches

Khalid Elhassan November 22, 2024 13 min

Dexter - Timothy Dexter — Timothy Dexter. New England Legends

15. Beginner’s Luck

Dexter - A $20 Continental Congress bill — A $20 Continental Congress bill. Medium

Dexter the investor benefited from beginner’s luck, when Congress decided to redeem its wartime notes at 1% of face value. 1% might not seem like much, but it was still a whole lot more than Dexter had paid for those notes. Better yet, Massachusetts redeemed its wartime notes for their full face value. Seemingly overnight, Dexter went from hubby of a rich widow to rich in his own right. Until then, he was an unremarkable businessman, but as seen below, the sudden wealth transformed him into an eccentric dingbat.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.